Moksha

Suffering is hitting yourself, without seeing why you are hitting yourself. When do you stop hitting yourself? You realize that the angel and yourself are the same. The delusion of the little self dissolves, and there is nothing left to hit.

Are you looking for mystical experiences, or the pure state of being where you are no longer controlled by your thoughts and emotions? Do you see the difference?

Traditionally, meditation includes a meditation object, such as the breath or the inner body. The intent is to focus your attention on the meditation object as the primary objective, while allowing external or internal sensations to come and go, without identifying with them. The more you practice attending to the meditation object, the easier it is to ignore everything else and simply be. When your intent is single-pointed, simply being present is its own reward. It is a joyful and healing state of being. If you meditate earnestly, through spiritual disciplines you can make an island for yourself that no flood can overwhelm. - Dhammapada 2:25

? When you look into the eyes of an enlightened being, you see unconditional freedom. Thoughts and emotions have no gravitational pull. Like clouds, they come and go, but are not identified with. It takes pure courage, sincerity, and wisdom to see beyond the desires and aversions of the world, and realize the Self that is hidden within. In the secret cave of the heart, two are Seated by life's fountain. The separate ego Drinks of the sweet and bitter stuff, Liking the sweet, disliking the bitter, While the supreme Self drinks sweet and bitter Neither liking this nor disliking that. The ego gropes in darkness, while the Self Lives in light. - Katha 1.3.1

Consciousness has the capacity to create different states of Self-awareness. Everything is Consciousness, including the transient beings that it creates. Waves of the ocean are still part of the ocean, but in a different state. Awakening happens when that part of Consciousness which is unaware of its true nature realizes itself. The wise, realizing through meditation The timeless Self, beyond all perception, Hidden in the cave of the heart, Leave pain and pleasure far behind. Those who know they are neither body nor mind But the immemorial Self, the divine Principle of existence, find the source Of all joy and live in joy abiding. - Katha 1.2:12

Consciousness made your life personal, not the ego. It creates, and it destroys, which is another way of saying that it partitions and unpartitions itself, infinitely. It is all Consciousness. Ultimately, you are impersonal. Only in the relative cosmos is personality a possibility. Within that cosmos, there must be differences, otherwise why create it in the first place?

@Regan ? You got it. Ultimate Consciousness is the uncaused cause, which has always been and always will be. It is beyond time and space, and is the creator of all things. One of the reasons it is called a Mystery is that any attempt to understand it with the human mind is bound to fail. Words always lead to paradox, and the mind doesn't like paradox. For example, how can the the dimensions of time and space spring from something which is beyond time and space? Creation implies ordinality, since logically there must have been a "time" before the cosmos was created. Sometimes the relative cosmos is compared to a dream, but what about before Consciousness decided to dream? It is infinite, but maybe part of its infinite nature is always dreaming, so there is no ordinality. As I see it, Consciousness is all there is, but it has the capacity to exist in different states of Self-awareness. Instead of trying to grasp reality conceptually, seek the direct wisdom of awakening. Something I read this morning that resonates: The truth of the Self cannot come through one Who has not realized that he is the Self. The intellect cannot reveal the Self, Beyond its duality of subject And object. Those who see themselves in all And all in them help others through spiritual Osmosis to realize the Self themselves. - Katha 1.2:8

Ultimate reality is formless, timeless, changeless, seamless, and spaceless. It is infinitely abundant in intelligence and potential. It cannot be perceived, only directly realized. It is profound joy and peace. It is the depthless well from which the cosmos is dipped and returned. Recently came across a nice commentary which may help with your question. All the matter in the universe must have been present in that "primeval atom," supercondensed to an unbelievable degree. In such a state, matter would no longer be possible as matter. It would be stripped down to pure energy, and energy itself would be raw and undifferentiated; variations like gravity and light would not have emerged. Time would not yet be real, for there can be no time before zero; neither would space make sense in the context of a question like, "What was there before the Big Bang?" Physicists reply, with Gertrude Stein, "There's no 'there' there. There's no 'then' then." Space and time, matter and energy, sprung into existence at the moment of creation; "before" that moment the concepts do not apply. The sages would find all this a perfect metaphor for the unitive state. In samadhi, reality is condensed into pure potential, without dimensions, without time, without any differentiation. Physicists do not say there was nothing before the Big Bang; they say everything came from that, and nothing more can be said. Similarly, samadhi is not emptiness but purnata; plenitude, complete fulness. The whole of reality is there, inner as well as outer: not only matter and energy but all time, space, causality, and states of consciousness. That fullness the Upanishads call sat: absolute reality, in which all of creation is implicit as an organism is implicit in DNA, or a tree in a tiny seed. The joy of this state cannot be described. This is ananda: pure, limitless, unconditioned joy. The individual personality dissolves like salt in a sea of joy. - Eknath Easwaran, Commentary on the Upanishads

Let go of the biases that are most hypnotizing now, and which keep you from Self-realization. Well have you renounced these passing pleasures So dear to the senses, Nachiketa, And turned your back on the way of the world That makes mankind forget the goal of life. Far apart are wisdom and ignorance. The first leads one to Self-realization; The second makes one more and more Estranged from one's real Self. - Katha Upanishad 2:3-4 One person's Self-occluding bias is different from another's. Even within that person's life, the biases needing to be let go of in that moment, will likely change. Discard whatever keeps you from being present, here and now.

Transpersonal psychology. Not that it will wake you up, but it is one of the closer fields that the mind can comprehend. Check out Steve Taylor's research and books, as an example.

...is to solve the Self.

⚡ Meditation can awaken, according to the sages. I can't speak to that, only to the value of meditation in helping you stay awake. Either way, meditate ?

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend the Bhagavad Gita. It is one of the best Self-help books. Take your time with it, Consciously contemplate it, and savor it as sustenance for the soul. You will not only see, but be guided, toward the path of Self-realization. Good people come to worship me for different reasons. Some come to the spiritual life because of suffering, some in order to understand life; some come through a desire to achieve life’s purpose, and some come who are men and women of wisdom. Unwavering in devotion, always united with me, the man or woman of wisdom surpasses all the others…the wise who are always established in union, for whom there is no higher goal than me, may be regarded as my very Self…seeing me everywhere and in everything. Such great souls are very rare. - Bhagavad Gita 7:16-19 In my case, the foundation was an alloy of contemplation, renunciation, selfless service, devotion, and above all, sincere commitment to truth. It took decades of living, but that was only the foundation. The catalyst for building the house itself was suffering. Without it, I don't believe I would have been willing to let go of the ledge of certainty, and fall into the abyss of the Self. Now, meditation is my mainstay. It is one thing to see, and another to continue seeing, despite the turbulence of life that threatens to drag you back into the undercurrent of the conditioned mind. I didn't meditate before awakening. I meditate now, daily, to maintain the sleepless state of presence. Never thought of myself as a meditator, but what a gift it has been.

@Windappreciator Medication is not the cause of most mental disorders. Biology and trauma are far more likely to be the cause. Medication doesn't just mitigate; it can be transformative for certain conditions. It can also destroy lives, if prescribed by quacks who don't truly care about their patients. I agree that Ritalin is way too overprescribed.

@Windappreciator I suspect that most of the time people are committed to psych wards because they have an underlying mental illness, not due to any medication they have taken to that point. More likely, is is just the opposite. Bipolar disorder is a classic example; people often refuse to take medication like lithium that would actually help. As I said, I'm not a fan of drugs in general, and often they are overprescribed, but they do have a place.

God is you, hiding from yourself. Enjoy the dream. Something I read earlier today that may help: What does it mean to say that nothing is separate and God alone is real? Certainly not that the everyday world is an illusion. The illusion is simply that we appear separate; the underlying reality is that all of life is one. The Upanishads view the world in grades of significance: as waking is a higher reality than dreaming, so there is a level of reality higher than that. All experience is real. Confusion arises only when a dream experience is treated as reality after one awakes - or when life is viewed as nothing but sensation, without wholeness, meaning, or goal. The ideal of the Upanishads is to live in the world in full awareness of life's unity, giving and enjoying. - Eknath Easwaran, commentary on the Upanishads

There are psychological conditions, like bipolar disorder, that benefit from medication. Drugs are not the devil. That said, I have a strong predisposition against drugs, unless they are truly necessary. Psychiatrists dispense them like candy. It is an easy fix, but not a cure. People that need medication find reasons not to take it, while the converse is true for people that don't need it. If someone is committed to a psych ward, chances are there is something with their brain chemistry that would benefit from medication. Still, overmedication is a problem, and psych wards are notorious for this. If life is crazy, medicate and meditate. They are not mutually exclusive.

Bluntness only bothers you if you believe that you are you

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Angels and demons are only relatively real. Enjoy the story, but realize it is just a story.

Happiness doesn't come from thrashing your thoughts and sumo wrestling your emotional shadows. The more you engage with them, the more power you give them. The secret is not to identify with them. Let them appear, let them be, and let them go. Don't let them pull you into their undercurrent. You are the ocean, and they are flotsam.

For me, the difference between awakening and enlightenment is this: One who has merely heard of fire has ajnana, ignorance. One who has seen fire has jnana. But one who has actually built a fire and cooked on it has vijnana. - Ramakrishna It is not so rare to see the fire, but cooking on it takes true intent. It is the dissolving of attachments to transience. Enlightenment is the "end state" in which a being has become nearly translucent, before dissolving entirely. Like a wave cresting, and returning to the ocean that created it. Are the most enlightened beings the best teachers? Not necessarily. Some have moved so far beyond the delusion of individuality that they are unable to speak your language. Look for a guide that resonates at a higher frequency, but still within your bandwidth. When the resonance discrepancy resolves, find a new guide, until you have climbed to the summit of yourself.

Too much knowledge is only dangerous if you mistake it for actual knowledge. If you think you know anything that matters, don't think again. Everything that matters is directly realized.

Many experiments like this have already been conducted, and science has yet to reliably demonstrate the replicability of supernatural abilities in a controlled setting. The closest evidence I've seen are accounts of near death experiences, where the individual was able to provide information that wouldn't have been possible otherwise, for example: However, even these accounts are case studies that only suggest the possibility of the supernatural, rather than proving it under controlled settings. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. Scientifically, it's impossible to prove something doesn't exist. You cannot accept the null hypothesis, you can only fail to reject it. The problem is that science is testing phenomena which, if they do exist, are beyond the normal parameters of human existence. Who can say these phenomena follow the same rules? To the contrary, the closer we get to the extremes of the cosmos, at both the micro- and the macro-levels, the less reliable these rules become. As Einstein showed, at the extremes of relative reality, the rules of science break down. Reality becomes subjective, and is entirely dependent on the perceiver. It's like a fish trying to prove there are no beings outside of the ocean, when the fish is bound to the ocean, and unable to see beyond it. Instead of chasing scientific proof, self-inquire. Consciousness, ultimately, can only be directly realized. Awakening is not a scientific exercise. It is direct Self-discovery.

@Endangered-EGO You're getting there, just remember that everything in the Universe is only relatively real. Ultimately, there is no time, no space, no differentiation, and no change. The Universe arises from, and returns to, ultimate Consciousness in an infinite cycle of creation and destruction. Think of ultimate Consciousness as being the depthless ocean, and the Universe as the waves that rise from the ocean and return to it. It is all the ocean, but the waves are only a transient surface expression.